This Saturday, Dec. 1, a representative from Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, Oregon’s farm worker union, will be visiting Oberlin to give a presentation on the organization’s work and its latest campaigns. Javier Velazquez, now an organizer with PCUN, worked until March 16 of this year at the Pictsweet mushroom farm in Salem, Oregon.

He was fired after questioning whether he was being paid minimum wage. His abrupt dismissal encouraged workers to demand better conditions at the farm, and they came to PCUN with their proposal for a unionization campaign. Since March, the workers, most of whom are from Mexico, have been organizing themselves and promoting a boycott of Pictsweet mushrooms in hopes of bringing the company to the negotiating table. The United Farm Workers of America, AFL-CIO is sponsoring a similar campaign wherein workers have been campaigning for union representation at another Pictsweet farm in Ventura, California.

In both campaigns, workers have stressed the importance of a union contract to gain better wages, improved medical care and safer working conditions, as well as regularized systems of promotion and seniority. Javier Velazquez will speak about his experiences working at Pictsweet, and as a union organizer, as well as about PCUN’s role. He will speak at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 1 in the Spanish House lounge.